Scary Stuff from Sean Noonan

Menacingly surreal, often assaultive, drummer Sean Noonan’s latest album A Gambler’s Hand is a feast for fans of dark, challenging music. Part indie classical, part chamber metal and part art-rock, with the improvisational flair of free jazz at its best, it’s a category unto itself – and one of the best albums of 2012 in any style of music. Noonan is a contradiction in terms, an extrovert drummer who’s also extremely subtle and an expert colorist: think Jim White with a heavier right foot, which isn’t a completely accurate way to describe Noonan’s style, but it’ll get you on the right track. The album was recorded in a single day, Noonan playing and conducting a bristling, energetic string quartet comprising violinists Tom Swafford and Patti Kilroy (of the equally enterprising Cadillac Moon Ensemble), violist Leanne Darling (of the deliciously intense, eclectic Trio Tritticali) and cellist David West.

The album, based on a Noonan short story soon to become a film, is an instrumental suite about a chronic gambler who finds himself behind a wall which he eventually becomes part of. It’s a concept straight out of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, a style which some of the music here resembles, but through a glass, darkly. Because much of it evokes a muted, sometimes out-of-focus horror or dread, Noonan plays with vastly more care and precision than the unleashed ferocity he’s capable of, utilizing every open space on his kit along with all kinds of furtively rustling percussion to enhance the disquiet.

There are three main themes here that the quintet carries through a deft series of variations; a sad, off-center, atonal canon; a ferocious, macabre march based on a tritone chord, and a dirge. The album opens with a dramatic, cinematic overture cached in the circling and fluttering of the strings, working a tense dichotomy between steady and jittery. The devils’ chords slam in with a towering ferocity: over the course of what’s essentially an eight-minute one-chord jam, the ensemble shifts between a murderously grandiose march and quietly rhythmic interludes. With only a couple of exceptions, one of them being a free improvisation that eventually descends into chaos, the rhythm is steady throughout the suite even when it’s implied rather than played: it’s a neat touch, especially coming from a drummer.

The first of the dirge variations follows the macabre march, Darling’s viola trilling and then sailing through a particularly electric passage as the ensemble holds the suspense with a muted pizzicato. Uneasy exchanges of atonalities between the strings and artfully understated cymbal washes over a potently simple low cello riff lead into a slightly quieter, shivery, utterly creepy variation on the tritone theme, then it falls apart with the improvisation, returning with a surprisingly warm, riff-driven version of the big march. That unexpected clarity and attractive melodicism, sad as it may be, makes for a vivid and powerful contrast with all the harshness that preceded it. As you might expect, it doesn’t last. The ensemble finally reach the pummeling crescendo they’ve been hinting at all along, sliding and screaming and scraping to keep from being imprisoned forever behind that wall. For the love of God, Montressor! It ends somberly, but more quietly than you would expect after such visceral horror.

Noonan leads a double string quartet (including the Momenta String Quartet) playing the album release show for this one on Sept 24 at 8 PM at Roulette, general admission is $15 ($10 students and seniors).

About

Welcome to Lucid Culture, a New York-based music blog active since 2007. You can scroll down for a brief history and explanation of what we do here. To help you get around this site, here are some links which will take you quickly to our most popular features:

If you’re wondering where all the rock music coverage here went, it’s moved to our sister blog New York Music Daily.

April, 2007 – Lucid Culture debuts as the online version of a somewhat notorious New York music and politics e-zine. After a brief flirtation with blogging about global politics, we begin covering the dark fringes of the New York rock scene that the indie rock blogosphere and the corporate media find too frightening, too smart or too unfashionable. “Great music that’s not trendy” becomes our mantra.

2008-2009 – jazz, classical and world music become an integral part of coverage here. Our 666 Best Songs of All Time list becomes a hit, as do our year-end lists for best songs, best albums and best New York area concerts.

2011 – one of Lucid Culture’s founding members creates New York Music Daily, a blog dedicated primarily to rock music coverage from a transgressive, oldschool New York point of view, with Lucid Culture continuing to cover music that’s typically more lucid and cultured.

2012-13 – Lucid Culture eases into its current role as New York Music Daily’s jazz and classical annex.